Agile is an excellent philosophy and the benefits it can bring to organisations can be substantial.

The challenge is, that many companies see AGILE is a change in development philosophy.  While that is true, it also requires a change management and leadership philosophy and if you do not address this, then it’s likely your implementation will fail and you will not achieve the benefits that AGILE promises.

AGILE require a change from a command and control, a day-to-day management approach to a more servant leadership approach.

For AGILE to be successful you need to have a management team that is courageous enough, confident enough and mature enough to make this change.

It’s not an easy change to make because many of us are taught management methodologies that focus on control, regular progress checks, management meetings and management decision making.

AGILE require leadership to give up a significant level of control, to delegate decision making to the teams regarding what will be delivered, how it will be delivered and when it will be delivered, and take a role of serving the development teams.

Servant leadership is a very powerful approach to leadership it looks to empower teams, encourage ownership and drive accountability all of which are needed to successfully drive the culture change – at all levels – which is needed for AGILE to be successfully implemented.

If you want to implement an AGILE Development philosophy, make sure that you have a clear plan and commitment to implement an AGILE Leadership philosophy too!